


The God at the End of the World

by lucius_complex



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assisted Suicide, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Romance if you squint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-26 17:47:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15006116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucius_complex/pseuds/lucius_complex
Summary: Tony finds a doorway - and then just a way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work has a soundtrack! [Click here](http://8tracks.com/lucius-complex/the-god-at-the-end-of-the-world) [links to 8tracks]

 

 

>                                                                          
> 
>  
> 
> **The God at the End of the World**
> 
> by Lucius Complex
> 
>  
> 
> _The reason I hold on, s'cause I need this hole gone_
> 
>  
> 
> 1
> 
> Tony looks down, and the first thing he notices is his own bare chest. Followed by stripped pajama pants and leather house slippers.
> 
> He doesn’t know where he is, and the vista of the split-level library that opens up before him looks too antediluvian to be anything that exists outside of the imagination. There is a dark wooden door behind him, heavy with mystery – a door he surely must have entered through at some point – except he doesn’t remember.  
> 
> It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this must be a dream. Of a _library_ , of all things.
> 
> Tony snorts. Himself, a futurist and a Stark. Dreaming about _books_. Made of paper. Parchment. 
> 
> The human mind truly is an incomprehensible marvel.
> 
> He feels a little like a character in an RPG game as he wander down the small flight of marble steps leading into the center of the hall – the first, he could tell, of many. Books lined every inch of wall in what was once a grand space – grand enough to impress even someone like Tony. As he walked, each room rose identical before him from floor to ceiling; a thousand volumes bound in leather and in a hundred unfathomable languages. Coiling staircases wound like sinuous trees around the edges of each room, framed by narrow windows and balustrades of wrought iron, their branching spindles flowering into a complicated symmetry of roses and wreathes.    
> 
> Tony moves fearlessly through the corridors, exploring. He would be more suspicious, but something about the place draws him, replaces fear with speculation. The air is thin but pleasant; cleaner and more salubrious than New York. That alone, Tony thinks, is worth lingering for.
> 
> He draws a finger on a passing shelf, intrigued by the lack of dust. For a seemingly abandoned place, it felt remarkably clean.
> 
> He alights upon the circular hall, again encircled with books. A part of the roof is broken, exposed to the elements. The skies overhead are full of dusty pink clouds that move too fast to be natural. There’s a tapestry of a family on one of the walls underneath the frieze, a large one, mildewed and partially rotted away that needs further investigation, but what really draws Tony’s eye is the tree.
> 
> Because there’s a _tree_ in the middle library, three stories high and slender as the man who sat beneath it. A man, a self-proclaimed god; that Tony recognizes.
> 
> _‘You.’_
> 
> Tony had expected Loki to drawl, to return greeting with his usual brand of faux-sociability. So he feels slightly foiled, when Loki finally looks up and monetarily looks as surprised as Tony felt, although the god is fast to blink all emotions away.
> 
> _‘Migardian,’_ Loki finally says, and his voice though cool, is tinted with incredulity. The god has swapped his green-gold armor and twisted horns for a pale olive robe that had clearly seen better days. He sits before a vast marmoreal table littered untidily with books and candlesticks, fingers curled into the edges of a gilded book, and looks as pole-axed about Tony’s presence as the human himself feels. Perhaps more.    
> 
> Tony squinted at the tableau, unaccustomed to seeing Loki sitting so still, weaponless and harmless, almost like a statue. Christ, if it wasn’t for the flickering candles, Tony might have walked right past him.
> 
> A beat passes, then two and Tony is totally awed, _awed_ at himself for not making the first move. 
> 
> ‘How did you get in?’ The god finally asks. To Tony he sounds more irritated than suspicious. It could be an illusion, he reasons. It was almost certainly a trap.
> 
> Or, he could _really_ be dreaming; in which case, repeated views of Disney’s Sorcerer’Apprentice might have influenced his subconscious more than he thought.
> 
> Tony pointed a thumb behind him. ‘I donno, Dancer, probably through the door like everybody else? Unless somebody beamed me up, Scotty, although I can’t imagine why, I’m really more of an audiobooks kind of guy.’
> 
> _Aren’t you supposed to be in prison_ almost tumbles past his lips, and had Tony been awake and this whole conversation more real, less dreamlike, he’s certain he would have asked, but this is being one the weirdest fantasies he’s ever had, maybe in forever –
> 
> Well. He’s here, so he might as well enjoy it. Maybe figure out what Dasher is doing in his head. Guy had a penchant for taking over people's minds, after all.
> 
> He wonders how long Loki has been here. Perhaps the library is a sort of prison. If so, Odin’s laws are as loose as Tony’s pajama pants.
> 
> ‘So. You’re looking very comfortable. Been here long?’
> 
> The god gives him a look that clearly communicates his opinion of Tony’s species being the daftest of all the Nine Realms. ‘You are here because you have a question, Midgardian. Ask it.’
> 
> Tony’s brows furrowed, because Loki said the word _Midgardian_ like he was saying _three-toed common skink_.
> 
> ‘What sort of questions can I ask?’
> 
> ‘Whatsoever you wish to know.’ A shade of impatience started coloring the god’s voice. ‘It is of no consequence to me.’
> 
> ‘So you’re some sort of cosmic Google? How’d you end up here? ’  
> 
> Thor’s younger and crazier brother merely stares at him, gaze hooded. ‘Is that truly the question you’ve come here to ask?’
> 
> Tony doesn’t have a clue why he’s here, but nobody needs to know that yet. ‘Let’s go with that, yeah.’
> 
> Loki stares at him like he’d just asked for a detailed description of his most bizarre kinks, before pushing the heavy tome in front of him away with a sigh. ‘Very well. Place your payment on the table and I will answer.’
> 
> ‘Ah, so there’s a price!’ Tony almost crows, he should have known.
> 
> ‘Of course there is a price, Stark.’ The god actually looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes. ‘Did you expect to come here to discover the secrets of the universe for free?’
> 
> ‘In return for eternal damnation? Thanks but no thanks; I read Faust in school.’
> 
> Loki blinks at him, seemingly nonplussed, before he slowly replies. ‘You can pay in whatever coin you wish. I have no need for them, beyond that my spells require barter of a physical nature.’
> 
> ‘Like American dollars?’ Tony cannot help quipping, ‘What’s the exchange rate? Do you accept Mastercard?’
> 
> Loki’s eyes are slitting by degrees, until he starts to resemble a cat. ‘Stay or go. Either way, I do not care, Stark.’
> 
> _So Loki does remember him._ The mortal stuffed his hands in his pajama pockets, unaccountably pleased for reasons he doesn’t care much to dwell on. Confirmation that he must be one memorable ant.
> 
> ‘You know I’m too rich to carry money around, Dasher. So what say you if I put up an IOU for today and you pass me your intergalactic account number? Or, I could pass you an IOU on behalf of New York.’ _And my tower,_ he didn’t add.
> 
> The god’s brows furrowed. ‘Are you trying to be funny.’
> 
> It wasn’t a question, the mortal realized. Dream Loki was trying to figure him out, wasn’t that cute. 
> 
> ‘Well,’ Tony spread his hands modestly. ‘You _did_ leave a big hole on the floor.’
> 
> To his surprise the mad god didn’t snarl at him, didn’t even rise to the bait or make one of his famous quips. Instead his eyelids dip, and when he straightens, there is a masked neutrality to his features that is for some reason forbiddingly appealing to Tony.
> 
> Tony’s always _liked_ being a trespasser.
> 
> ‘You have but one question, Midgardian. Do you still wish to waste it on interrogation?’ 
> 
> ‘No knowledge is wasted, Jingles. Besides, I can afford it. Don’t I get a chair?’
> 
> _‘No.’_
> 
> ‘Ok. So why are you here, Jingles? Did daddy make you some sort of-‘ Tony waved airily at the space, enjoying himself far more than the occasion warrants, ‘-Asgardian librarian?’
> 
> Loki stares at him. He wasn’t very interesting, for a figment of Tony’s imagination. Surely a god of _mischief_ would possess more panache than this.
> 
> Tony tries again. ‘So you’re grounded, eh.’
> 
> Finally the god opens his mouth. His words are slow and measured, emerging out of subterranean streams, reluctant for sunlight.
> 
> ‘I am the keeper of this space. It is a new role, and yes, you could equate it to one of your libraries on Midgard. And we are not on Asgard.’  
> 
> ‘Is this a sentence from daddy-O?’ Tony pressed.
> 
> ‘It is a sentence, yes. but not a punishment,’ comes the mystifying reply, as Loki’s eyes tilts back to his book. ‘That is all I can answer today.’
> 
> ‘Riddles,’ Tony scowls, but Loki does not look at him so he is disappointed.
> 
> ‘Go now,’ the god says with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Leave your slippers behind,’
> 
> Tony’s head whips around to stare at the top of Loki’s head as the god’s eyes flicker up at him, bright green and unfathomable as a feline. The rest of him is still firmly buried behind the book.
> 
> ‘You still need to _pay_ something, Stark,’ the god reminded tiredly. ‘Else when you leave this room the knowledge of your answers will remain here.’
> 
> ‘Right. Right. My slippers.’
> 
> Shrugging, Tony kicks off his finely made tooled leather slippers, toes protesting at the onslaught of sudden cold. He lines it on a carpet of indiscriminate colour. ‘My… payment.’
> 
> To his surprise the god actually grunts in acquiesce. ‘Farewell, Midgardian.’
> 
> 'K'bye Jingles. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.'
> 
> He can feel Loki's gaze on his back as he walks away, feeling oddly pleased about the encounter.
> 
> He doesn't remember what happens after that. 
> 
>  


	2. Chapter 2

                                                                                 

 

**The God at the End of the World**

by Lucius Complex

 

 

2

‘Why here of all places?’ he asks the next time he comes back.

In this iteration of his bizarrely seamless dream, Tony has his oldest sneakers on. He is pleased to see that his subconscious must have caught on to how underdressed he’d felt the last time, because he’s actually sporting actual clothes now – a pair of jeans and tee shirt, and his hair is actually lying flat.

So if his steps spring jauntier along book-lined corridors, heading for jagged pink sky, sweet ephemeral breeze, and a certain sulky god of mischief, he’s hardly to be blamed. 

Loki looks if anything; a carbon copy of his last dream, dressed in the same olive robes beneath the same slender tree, and immensely irritated to see him again. And if Tony squints, he’s certain that the god is just as astonished at Tony’s presence in the library as the last time.

‘Midgar-‘

‘That’s Tony to you by the way. Tony Stark,’ The mortal interrupts.

Loki’s expression clearly says ‘meh’ but he doesn’t deign to answer. He has another giant book opened before him.

Tony opens his mouth. ‘So I-’

 _'Quiet,’_ the god snaps.

Shrugging and rolling his eyes, the mortal watches as Loki shuts one book, then opens another. The skin on his wrist is _so_ thin. Like the baking paper Tony eats his doughnuts on. He suppresses the urge to seize Loki’s hands and examine them closer.

Glancing around idly, Tony wonders how time passes for Loki in this frozen space. To his bemusement he finds his slippers had remained where he’d had left it, except now with a coat of fine of dust.

He wonders if the god would even notice if he wore them and left his scruffy canvas ones behind.

‘You have another question, I suppose,’ the god finally says, looking up. The sarcasm on his face is a bit hard to miss.

‘Of course, Dancer, this ain’t a social call,’ Tony grins, outrageously lying and unaccountably happy with himself about it. ‘This time I even bought my wallet along.’

Riling Loki up is turning out to be the highlight of being forced into the highly time-wasting and compulsory act of sleeping. He wouldn’t deny he was pleased to be back.

The god glares at him, but as he still happens to be sitting whilst Tony hovers several feet above him _grinning_ , it didn’t have much effect. Loki words have a sour, dour quality to it, as if he’d spent the better part of the day sucking on a bag of limes.

‘And your question?’

Tony hoisted himself up and sat on the corner of the table, ignoring the god radiating outrage at his presumptuousness. Serves the dude right for not providing a single chair. ‘What is it exactly you do here?’

‘I sit and read.’ Loki scoffs. A beat passes, then two; and the god finally adds reluctantly, ‘I suppose you could say I’m waiting.’

‘Hurm,’ Tony says, and when no clarification is offered, presses on; ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘The same as all living things.’ Loki’s eyes seem to move through the book in front of him very fast, clearly intent on ignoring the human as much as possible.

‘And what’s that?’

Finally Loki looks at him, and it feels like Tony has finally Leveled Up.

‘Death,’ he says succinctly. Tony’s magpie curiosity immediately swoops down on this meager answer.

‘Whose death?’ he asks. Loki glares at him, but Tony is undaunted. ‘Can you even _die?’_  

The god turns away, signaling the end of their conversation, that it all he gets from Loki that day.

But an answer is still an answer, so he leaves the scruffy sneakers behind, happy that his subconscious had remembered to wear socks.

*

3

The next time Tony shows up and waves at Loki like an old friend, the god has stopped looking surprised, although he still had that look that Tony sometimes sees on Pepper, when she was bargaining with the universe. Usually it involved asking for Tony to become someone else’s problem.

‘So hey, Jingle Bells, dicha miss me?’

The god pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Stark,’ he exhaled.

‘Yep, you definitely missed me, Loki-dookey. Not that I blame you, because _this,_ but you could definitely show it better, maybe provide some coffee- _’_

‘Your question?’ Loki says sharply, holding out his hand.

‘Jezz what’s the rush,’ Tony says but he knows he’s stalling for time. This time, he intends to stay longer, whether the god liked it or not. _Much_ longer. He puts a stack of greenback bills on the table.

‘Let’s start with how many questions I can ask everytime I come here.’

 _‘_ One,’ comes the succinct, bitter retort, although by the look on the god’s face he would have dearly preferred to say _none, get out Stark, and never come back._

In no hurry for this particular dream to end, Tony circles the domed hall, admiring the crumbling architecture. It is a place his mother could have loved, and Tony spares a thought for the maudlin memory of Maria Stark perched at the box windows of his childhood manor, smoothing out the pages of the book on her lap with gloved hand as if settling a cherished pet. She had always loved libraries. Why his father had married someone so _classic_ in manners and inclination, so markedly different from himself and anyone in carefully curated his kingdom of futurism and cold digital efficiency, Tony could only guess. Certainly he had never seen them happy together. 

He looks up at the hole in the sky, noting that the clouds were continuously in dressed in the same shade of pink. They seem to be an even and eternal backdrop, neither darkening nor lightening as the hours passed, like a TV rest screen. The branches of the tall but slender tree Loki seems to be perpetually ensconced under spreads itself overhead, a mess of organic limbs that seems to the only source of life in this place.

Because Loki, for some reason he can’t put his finger on- doesn’t feel half as alive to Tony as the tree above him. Rather he looks holographic, lethargic, half rubbed out.

Of course it’s all hypotheses. The god has always been pale, so it’s hard to see if he was truly unwell or merely withdrawn. Perhaps he is simply bored out of his skull – certainly Tony himself would be as well, had he been stuck in a room full of paper, forced into answering questions for whomever numbskull happens to waltz in like some rude magicky receptionist. Because Tony would bet that this isn't a voluntary exercise in charity for the god.     

Tony eyes a basket of what looks like crystal balls of varying size. Some of them looks dull and cracked, whilst others flickered as if containing living things. Tony thinks that he spots shapes within that seem to glow ever _brighter,_ ever more intriguing, the closer he approaches.

He develops a sudden itch to pick one up and take a closer look.

Loki’s voice comes out from nowhere, sharp with warning. ‘Do not gaze at those for too long.’

Tony hastily puts the crystal ball back, where its light retreats into a sullen flicker. Unnerved, he backs away and almost trips over an abandoned loom in the corner. Glaring at the loom, he kicks at the spook that had fallen off to roll next to his feet. Who the hell puts some old-arsed loom in a library for people to trip on? Had Loki taken up weaving as a means of passing the time?

He catches Loki eyeballing him with that creepily neutral expression, a blend of bewilderment, contempt, and something else he can’t identify. Caught in the act of staring the god looks away, and Tony and clears his throat.

‘Nice digs. Never told you how much I like it. All the paper and… ah, bland colours. Restful. ’

‘You shouldn’t be here’ Loki says again, like a broken record. He still doesn’t look up.

‘Well, I don’t know how I get here either, Jingles. So unless you’ve got a fireplace and some floo powder, I’m guessing we’ll both be keeping each other company until the sun breaks or you answer my question.‘

‘Very good, Stark, you seem to be very certain of how it all works,’ the god observed blandly; ‘-far more certain than I.’

‘Seems a bit obvious, if you ask me.’

Loki stands up and approaches him, an act that puts Tony instantly on guard. His movements are soundless. Ghostly. A bit like Jarvis actually. How a person goes from foaming mad violence to dainty and scholarly, Tony has no clue.

The god comes to a stop before him, a little nearer than necessary, and Tony has to stop himself from drawing back. His robes settle around him, a sweep of green silk like a wave, foam forming around Tony’s sneakers.  

‘And do you have it? A question?’

Well. Truth be told, he hasn’t thought _that_ far. ‘You mentioned that you’re serving a sentence, not  a punishment. Does Thor know about this? That you’re _here._ Or does he think you’re still in Asgard, serving your sentence.’

‘How clever you must think you are,’ Loki smiles, taping a finger on his chin. ‘No, Thor does not know of this place. A skull as thick as his? The Norns will never lead him to this door. I’m guessing he tells you that I serve a dungeon sentence under lock and key, down in the bowels of Asgard? How unimaginative.’

‘That’s between me and your brother, Jingles.’

‘By all means.’

‘And I’m guessing this is between you and daddy-o?’

Loki’s not-smile widens. _‘Exactly.’_

‘With a father like that-‘ Tony sighs and files this away to digest at leisure by himself. ‘You’re like two snakes trying to see who eats the other first.’

His words draw a surprised bark of laughter from Loki as he pulls away, heading back to his seat under the tree. ‘I believe that is not an unapt imagery. You are a clever one, Stark.’

‘For a _Midgardian.’_

Loki inclines his head mockingly. ‘For a Midgardian.’

‘I’m going then,’ the mortal says, turning slowly as to give Loki a chance to say something. But the fallen god merely waves a hand and does not look up at all. He could well be a hologram, so still does he become.

‘Rude,’ Tony grunts. But then he’s paying for Loki’s time in used shoes, so there’s very little ground to complain.

*

 


	3. Chapter 3

                                                                                  

 

**The God at the End of the World**

by Lucius Complex

4

Tony pulls up a chair to wait, and the tree shakes its leaves at him.

‘Brat,’ Tony shakes his hair and grumbles up at it. They’d started a sort of one-upmanship since Tony started visiting regularly. Semi-regularly. He wasn’t about to be bested by a _tree_.

‘It was here first,’ Loki’s put-upon voice muffles from the back of a bookcase as the leaves rustle smugly at him.

Tony raises his eyebrow as the god walks back to the table, arm loaded with books in languages Tony had no hope of ever understanding.

‘Are you saying you prefer a tree’s company to mine?’

‘Vastly so,’ the god deadpans, depositing his load down on the table with a thump. That the stack is high enough to partially obscure Tony from view was probably deliberate, because Loki is a prat. ‘And who wouldn’t? It sheds leaves instead of drivel.’

‘Oh that burns. That’s hurtful, that hurts. I’m way more charming than chlorophyll and tree fiber, and you’re hurtful, Legolas, you have no taste.’

Even from behind a stack of books, Tony can feel the god’s eye roll.

‘Norns forbid I ever become partial to yours, Stark.’

‘Jealously, you and your tree. That’s all it is, jealousy. Everybody wants to be me- _ow!’_

The tree had dropped a twig on him. A sharp one. It bounced off his head and dropped between the pages of Loki’s open book, where Tony cant lunge for it like a vengeful, inanimate sparrow. It might have been worth to see the god startled into a round of involuntary snickering though.

Tony rubs his skull sullenly as Loki’s laughter echoes through the room and grumbles good-naturedly. ‘Asking for a trim with a chainsaw, eh.’

‘You’ll not win, you know,’ the god advices.

 _‘Pfff_ sure I will. You’re biased, that’s all.’

Although it was easy to see the similarities. Loki was a bit like a tree himself, with his swishy green robes and his penchant for stillness. He had a gaze that reminded Tony not of a particular emotion but of a time of day; of twilight, suspended in time. A nocturnal and moribound gaze that having crested the cosmos at furious speed, is now too tired to search or resist.

It's weird, really. Tony should not be identifying with these droopy emotions, as sweet and heady as flowers half gone to rot. After all, he’s still at the prime of his life.

Places to go, things to invent.

But he’d be lying if he couldn’t admit his attraction to the place. This crumbling library of Loki’s holds an invisible scent that feels drugging. It lures- it has something strangely peaceable about it, like a stone sinking slowly to the bottom of a lake.

‘Stark.’

Tony looks up; he hadn’t noticed that the laughter had stopped. Unbidden his eyes follow the pale line of splayed fingers, wrists and arms. ‘Yes.’

‘One does not comprehend why you keep turning up.’

Why, indeed. If Tony knew half of how his own mind works, he’d be twice as rich by now. Or at the very least, half as bored.

‘Well,’ Tony clears his throat. ‘We have a transaction.’

Loki’s voice turns as dry as the leather on one of his books covers. ‘Our transaction has long expired.’

‘I thought you said the place is unreachable unless you have something I want?’

Loki rubs his nose. Damn if he doesn’t actually look concerned. ‘I am not supposed to be able to receive you so many times. And for no evident purpose.’

Ah yes well. There _is_ that.

Tony spreads his hands. ‘I donno, Jinggles. I fall asleep, I wake up here. It’s not my choice either. Maybe I’m here to do something for _you,_ rather than the other way around, did you ever think of that?’

The god simply eyeballs him. Tony has discovered that Loki is quite good at doing that.

‘You assume mortal, that you are in a position to do something for _me.’_

Tony shrugs. ‘Who knows. I’m good at busting people out of places.’ His brain might have winced a little as he’d said that though. Did he just offer _to bust Loki out of prison-_

But Loki merely frowns. ‘I do not intend to leave.’

‘Why not?’

Rather than answer, the god simply glares at him. It’s getting to be a real habit.

‘Consider that my question of the day, oh wise peddler of all the notions of the universe. Are you planning to sit here alone with only a surly tree for company? Until the end of time?’

‘You cannot speak of the end of time in a place with no _time,_ Stark.’

Tony blinks, not sure what to do with that statement, and decides to plough gamely on.

‘Although I can’t say I don’t understand wanting to stay in a quiet place. There are some days I abhor civilization-‘

Finally Loki heaves a sigh, and Tony almost crows _‘I win’_. He mouths it to himself very quietly instead. The tree drops several twigs on him in quick succession, but Tony is ready – there’s a book on his head.

‘If I tell you, will you go away?’

‘Maybe, yeah.’ _When pigs fly._

The god snorts as if he heard him, and hold out a hand crisscrossed with veins the colour of mint toothpaste and pimento.

‘Your payment.’

Tony puts a bottle of scotch on the table.

‘I’m sure I am about to regret this,’ Loki mutters half to himself, but he puts two glasses on the table. Tony is instantly captivated by their make: whatever material is it, nothing on Earth can produce colour like that. He opens his mouth to ask, but Loki cuts him off.

‘Stark, are you quite certain you wish to waste undoubtedly expensive scotch on a question about out-worldly drinking vessels?’

‘Ah. Dammit.’ He eyes the glass in his land, looking at the swirl changing colours and moving with the alcohol; it was bloody _fascinating._ He’ll just have to come back again and bring it up. No big deal. ‘Ok Dancer, hit me with your story and make it good.’

‘With _your_ attention span? One needs more than scotch, perhaps ties to a live wire.’

Tony has a thousand retorts queued and waiting; he swallows them and waits patiently, until Loki’s eyes seem to finally look past him, peering into cogs and timelines beyond his human grasp— peering in fact, into myth and magic –elements as unknowable to Tony as peering deep into his own dreams through a veil.

Loki’s voice is a slow moving river, a music sung low and lambent; flowing through the dark caverns of Tony’s mind with its own echo. He speaks so softly that Tony has to strain to hear him.

‘First you must understand, Stark, that this is the library at the end of the world. Not the world as _Midgard_ understands it, not even on the World Tree, no. This is a place that sits betwixt stars, betwixt the streams of the universe. It has existed even before the new gods came to be, before the birth of Odin and Ymir, before Asgard and the Nine. Some say the library and the world tree are part of a triumvirate  – part of the same origin nucleus of creation that split into Life, Death and Knowledge. The world tree is the giver of Life, the library provides Knowledge to those clever or fortunate enough to discover her doors, and as for Death, suffice to say none can discover her secrets until they enter her halls.’

‘Huh. Lucky me then.’

‘Indeed,’ Loki spreads his delicate hands and continued, ‘These shelves hold all the knowledge of the world, past and present, and I am for now her keeper. The library receives but one guest at a time, and not of my choosing. It is impossible to enter this space with weapons or a hoard, intent on burglary, stories abound of wizards and rulers who tried and went mad. It is impossible to remove a book. Perhaps most pertinently, it is the question, not the person, that finds the door.’ The god leans forward, green eyes gleaming with unknowable depths: a strange wisdom, a stranger greed. ‘So the fact that you keep showing up, Stark, demonstrates that the library has agreed to answer your question, but you have yet to relinquish it to be answered.’

Tony does not know why he believes him – Loki is or was the god of lies, after all. But he does believe Loki's every heartfelt word. But Tony doesn’t actually show up with a real question, at least not really. He’s got a million things he wants to know more about, but nothing aching; he’d give his soul for.

He is after all, a cynic. You're born, you live, you die. What else is there to know?

‘Nice story but it still doesn’t tell me how _you_ ended up here, Dancer.’

‘A sentence in this library, instead of a cold cell is a worthy trade, wouldn’t you say?’

‘And you’re _free_ now, are you?’ But Tony doesn’t press, because the god’s sullen silence is enough.

‘ _Who_ amongst us is truly free? But for a given value of freedom, one may say one is free here, yes. I arrived here by accident, or thought I did. I thought I had been clever, yet discovered my presence had been expected. There was a man in this seat, who was a… he was in some ways, _human_. But the knowledge behind his eyes were like nothing I’d ever encountered.’ Loki breaks off and there is a wistful twist of his lips. ‘I felt- I was welcomed.’

Tony looks down at his hands and found them fastened on the table. ‘And he gave you this post? Just like that?’

‘No, of course not. First we did battle.’

Tony can feel himself getting more confused. ‘Um. So you _won_ this post. It sounded like you liked him.’

‘Of course I didn’t want the post, Stark. I was still restless then.’ Loki’s eyes actually crinkle at the corners when he smiles. How bout that. ‘But I did like him, yes. He was a willy one. He’d been the caretaker of this library for a good fifteen centuries, before I found my way in.’

‘I see.’ Naturally he didn’t, and would bet that Loki already knows that. But hey, Tony can be patient every now and then.

‘Does that satisfy your curiosity Midgardian?’

The thought of anything possessing an understanding that moves so far beyond him irritates Tony, but also makes him shiver a little with something akin to excitement. It’s a feeling he hasn’t felt in so long that Tony had trouble recognizing it. Then he realised that it came from his childhood; from the readings of his first science textbook, from his first view of the cosmos through his childhood telescope.

Isn’t it grand then, Isn’t it a riot that listening to Loki talk is what brings back the tendrils of Tony’s nostalgic; memories of an innocence cut short? 

‘What do you think I’m here for, if this isn’t a dream? Is there something you’re sup-’

‘You think this a mere _dream?_ ’ And just like that, Loki goes right back to glaring. ‘We should all be so lucky, Stark. The library _chooses_ you, Norns alone knows for what reason. You will keep coming back, until you discover what your question is.’  

‘Yeah but you’re the one with all the answers, aren’t you?’

Loki’s mouth quirks, the humor drawn reluctantly out of him. The look in his eyes say ‘touché’. Tony likes it; he will bring alcohol on every subsequent visit, because it clearly mellows out techy librarians. 

They toast to several things: wormholes, alternate dimensions, fathers with bottomless ambitions. Loki doesn’t bring up Thor and Tony finds himself reluctant to ask. By the time he walks semi-steadily to the door, his head is filled with enough mind-blowing theories that he thinks its about to explode.

‘Stark.’

Tony jerks, narrowly avoids a concussion with the doorframe. ‘What?’

‘Next time, bring some of your excruciating American food along.’

*

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I bumped into someone this year whilst I was travelling that told me I should continue writing, so here I am again, adding to countless attempts (countless failures). But I'm grateful for the push. You know who you are.


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